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FAQs - General
- I’m writing (or have written) a novel. Will you critique it for me?
- Why haven’t you replied to my email?
- What advice would you give to people who want to write?
- Why is fantasy so popular?
- What do you hope readers get out of your books?
- Do you identify with any of the characters you write about?
- Do you think speculative fiction is taken seriously, or is it still marginalised?
- Why is it so hard to get your books in the US?
- Are your books available online as Ebooks?
- Are any of your books being made into movies? If not, why not?
I’m writing (or have written) a novel. Will you critique it for me?
Sorry, but I’m so busy I’m struggling to get my own editing done. However, every town has writer’s groups, and there are also lots of regional and state writer’s centres. If you join one of these you’ll find lots of people willing to critique your work.
Why haven’t you replied to my email?
At the moment I’m so busy I’m having trouble even reading all my mail, much less replying to it. I do try to get through all my email but I’m often months behind. However if you have a general question, it’s probably answered somewhere in these FAQs. You can also post a message on my Facebook wall and I’ll do my best to reply if it’s not answered in these FAQs.
What advice would you give to people who want to write?
You need talent, first of all, but it’s not enough. Thousands of people can write well, but not many of them ever get published. What you need most of all is the determination to keep going no matter how many knock-backs you get, and to learn your craft no matter how long it takes.
But if you can write a great story, with real characters that your readers can empathise with, you’ll get there in the end. That’s what most readers are looking for – not beautiful writing, but great storytelling.
There’s heaps more about writing on my website, particularly in my long article, The Truth about Publishing, which aims to tell beginning writers almost everything they need to know about the world of writing and publishing.And all the other articles in my Writing section.
Why is fantasy so popular?
People no longer believe that science has the answers; besides, SF has largely polarised into a literary side, rarely of mass appeal, and a popular side mainly consisting of the franchises like Star Wars, Dr Who etc. And because our lives are ever more frantic and out of our control, contemporary fiction has lost its appeal as well – there are more than enough horrors on the nightly news.
Fantasy offers an escape from a corrupt, controlled and degraded world to a simpler and more comprehensible place where ordinary people can make a difference. Where small, flawed but ultimately admirable heroes like Maelys or Ike or Runcible Jones, who are brave, steadfast, noble (or whatever), will fight on, no matter the odds, for what they believe in. And we read fantasy because that’s the way we would like to be. We see a small, frightened but heroic part of ourselves in these heroes.
What do you hope readers get out of your books?
I’m just a storyteller, so my main aim is to tell the best story I can. To take my readers out of their lives for a day or two, to places they’ve never been before, and to meet characters unlike the ones they’ve been reading about in other books. But if some readers are inspired by the way Runcie and Mariam face terrible dangers and overcome them in the Runcible Jones books, or Ike and Mellie in Grim and Grimmer, or Tali in The Tainted Realm, and end up changed for the better, that would be good too.
Do you identify with any of the characters you write about?
I identify with every character I’m writing about in some way or other, even the bad ones. A writer has to identify with all their characters, to some degree, to truly know what makes them tick. So even if I’m writing about a really nasty character, I have to try and get inside their heads to find out their deepest desires and greatest fears, so I can understand why they do the wicked things they do. And also to find out something likeable, appealing or admirable about them to give them more depth. No character should be utterly evil with no redeeming features.
Do you think speculative fiction is taken seriously, or is it still marginalised?
No, not seriously at all, even though at least 15% of all novels sold are fantasy, SF or horror. For example, as far as I can remember, there hasn’t been an SF or fantasy author invited to the Sydney Writer’s Festival in the past three years, and the other big writer’s festivals aren’t much better (even though they usually have a couple of hundred writers there). Our books hardly ever get reviewed in the main newspapers, either.
And that’s curious, because SF, at least, often deals with issues that are vital to humanity’s future. For example, in my Human Rites eco-thrillers set in the near future, I tried to show what it would really be like in a global-warming world. In Terminator Gene, New Orleans was wiped out by a hurricane several years before that actually happened. Some of my other forecasts from the Human Rites series have also come true already, which is pretty worrying.
Why is it so hard to get your books in the US?
Only The View from the Mirror Quartet has been published in the US, way back in 2001 and 2002, and the Tainted Realm trilogy in 2011-2013. These series are available in print and Ebooks from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others, and the Audiobook edition is also available from Audible.com and iTunes. The rest of the Three Worlds series is available in book form from Amazon.ca, as the UK edition was distributed in Canada, and also from Amazon.co.uk or from Australian online booksellers.
Are your books available online as Ebooks?
All my books are available as Ebooks except for the Sorcerer’s Tower series (which will be available soon) and the Grim and Grimmer series (which won’t be available as an ebook for some time). Due to copyright restrictions not all of these books may be available in all countries.
Are any of your books being made into movies? If not, why not?
Unfortunately, no. It costs less than $50,000 to publish and print a book, and more than 200,000 book titles are published in English a year.
It costs at least $100 million to make a fantasy movie, and only a handful are made each year, almost always from books that have sold countless millions of copies. My books have sold well, but not that well, and it’s unlikely that any of them will ever be made into movies. Sadly.